On this still warm morning in early September, residents of the Maison du bonheur et de l’harmonie are enjoying the shaded terrace, while the speakers play traditional music in the background. The facility located in the town of Nanjiantou, about a hundred kilometers southwest of Beijing, only opened four years ago and has gone through the complicated years of the Covid-19 pandemic, but its 150 beds are already two-thirds occupied. The operator has also opened another retirement home in a nearby village. “The market is growingexplains Pang Qing, the director. Most of the time, children cannot be with their parents.
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The problem is well identified in China: accelerated aging. The number of Chinese over 60 years old has increased from 126 million in 2000 (10.2% of the population) to 280 million in 2022 (19.8%) and, according to estimates by the National Health Commission, there could be 400 million in 2035. Rapid economic development, coupled with the basic medical structures of the communist system, has considerably increased life expectancy, which has climbed from 44 years at the turn of the 1960s to 78 years in 2021.
At the same time, the demographic transition, accelerated by the one-child policy that ran from 1980 to 2016, caused the number of births to fall. And it has not recovered since, due to the cost of living and the lack of a real policy to support families. It is therefore possible today to find households in an inverted pyramid: four grandparents, two parents, one child. To cope, the National People’s Assembly began discussing, on Tuesday, September 10, a bill raising the retirement age, of which no details have yet been made public.
Breaking with family ethics
Economic growth has triggered a rural exodus that has mainly concerned the workforce: the Chinese have left the countryside to work in the city or in new industrial zones. But now that their parents have aged, they find themselves faced with a dilemma. Tradition would have it that they keep their elderly parents under their roof. But to maintain their standard of living, finance their children’s education and try to ensure a better future for them, it is impossible for them to leave these urban jobs to return to live in the countryside. Paying for a retirement home therefore sometimes seems like a more obvious solution than putting the economic balance of the household at risk. In the House of Happiness, it will cost around 2,000 yuan (255 euros) per month.
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